Live Chess Enhancements - 2012-01-25
Greetings, chess-fans!
Today in Live Chess, we made dozens of minor (and not so minor) fixes and enhancements that we want to tell you about! Well, some of them at least… :)
Probably the first thing you'll notice are the new Live Chess sound effects! We've added higher-quality sounds for all the usual board events (game start, game end, moves, castling, check, capture, promotion); and we've added brand new sounds for illegal moves, and a new short warning when your clock hits 10 seconds!
In other news, chess coaches and others who regularly use our Live Analysis Boards will be very happy to hear we've fixed MANY small bugs and usability issues. Also exciting, we made it easier to host public boards that have LOTS of observers - to make the tool more useful for live event coverage in the near future!
Next up, grudge match scores are now more persistent! We keep the cumulative scoring of per-game points going, unless you wait more than 15 minutes between games or start playing with a different time control. You can even play someone else between games in a grudge match without interfering with the points-scoring. We also made the presentation of the point-scores a bit cleaner.
We made some adjustments to the Fair Play system: If users who already have poor sportsmanship records close their browser mid-game (i.e. to cause an abort or to inconvenience their opponent), they will now instead be auto-resigned pretty quickly. We also upped the allowable time for players to make their first move to a full 20 seconds. (See here for more info about Fair Play.)
Another new thing we introduced today: a "rematch delay" for cases where you end a game with someone and click "New 10|0" (for instance) instead of "Rematch" - so that you don't end up playing the same player over and over if you didn't actually desire a rematch. Also, note that the rematch function will now work, even if you have direct challenges disabled in your settings.
We now have a new Indonesia Chat Room!
On a somewhat more anti-social note, you may no longer request friendship of the Computer players. (Sorry, they are here to work - not socialize!)
Well, apart from lots of minor bug-fixes and miscellaneous improvements, that's pretty much it... Oh! We formally removed "beta" status from Live Tournaments! We have some exciting plans for tournaments on the way, but the platform is now proven, & works extremely well!
Ok! That's it for today! Let us know what you think in the Comments!
Find this by accident? Don't risk missing news! Track the Webmaster!
